


Broken Wings and Ashes

by JenovaVII



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alter Egos, Bisexuality, Bonding, Dean's POV, Episode Tag, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Hugs, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s08e02 What's Up Tiger Mommy?, Reincarnation, Resurrection, Reunion, Romance, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenovaVII/pseuds/JenovaVII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 8x02. Castiel let go; he had to let go to set Dean free. Now, Dean's safe. So Cas reaches for him once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Wings and Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Written before I started watching Season Gr8, edited after. The Dean/Cas intensity is seriously ridiculous, has always been and just keeps on escalating. They're so painfully beautiful.

There's an incredibly familiar _woosh_ of wind, a reminiscing of fluttering wings if you know what to listen for. Dean knows, he _knows_ as soon as he hears it, even before he's turning fast on his feet, disturbing his center of equilibrium to hell and back.

And there he is.

"Cas." Dean either calls out or whispers the name with a tied tongue and a too-dry mouth, with a gulp of breath he doesn't know and doesn't give a rat's ass where it crawled out from because... 'cause hell, it feels like his chest's constricting so painfully it was as if his lungs couldn't friggin' function, as if his whole body's in need of a jumpstart.

He's grinning and walking forward, all bow-legs and decade-old leather jacket over two layers of shirts and circling the angel— _his_ angel—in a too-tight, manly, totally not "chick-flick moment" kinda hug.

The stupid sonovabitch just keeps on coming back, damn him. _Damn him_.

He doubles the strength on his arms, feels Cas doin' the thinking, doing this... stiffening of his whole body. Dean scowls but gives it time, it makes him angry but he gives _him_ time. He's getting better at gettin' a grip. It pays up when he feels as Cas has finished putting his rampant thoughts in order and starts relaxing against Dean's hold after a while. As Cas starts feeling like maybe it's okay. Like things are... like things are actually okay. Things _are going_ to be okay. They'll make it 'appen.

And this time Dean's being embraced back, _freakin' finally_. Cas is timidly palming at the low of his back, at his shoulder blades, as if he doesn't know that even if he's not exactly forgiven _but they're so past all that crap already it's not even funny, damnit, this block-headed dumbass_. As if he hadn't known Dean would welcome him or... as if he'd had any doubts that Dean would've done anything, given anything—

_Any. Thing._

—to get him back.

And then Castiel finally grows some balls and presses into the hug like a grown Goddamn man, like he should've back in Purgatory. (Jesus, hadn't the dude been the one who'd one-sidedly decided there was absolutely zero personal space between the two of 'em from the get-go?)

And then Cas says... heh, Dean has to snicker to himself at that (or at least Dean _thinks_ he only does it in his head but the hair behind Cas' ear, right where Dean has his face tucked in, moves a bit more with his harsher exhale of air, so. There's that.) So yeah, Dean damn well snickers out loud for everyone to hear at that 'cause it's just... it's so purely _Cas_ —like "I'm an Angel of the Lord" Cas and "I gripped you and raised you from perdition" Cas—that it feels like wakin' up from a nightmare featuring freaking Alastair, feels like the very best slice of pie in the whole state, feels like the first taste of oxygen after almost drownin', feels like... feels like life itself.

Cas says—he _only_ _ **has**_ _to say—,_ "Hello, Dean."

And Dean... Supernatural realm famous, feared by Heaven and Hell and now Purgatory hunter Dean Winchester _sags_ against him.

Dean takes a deep, lung-resetting inhale in relief, in gratitude, in _I don't even know man, just_. Whoever or whatever the hell has brought Cas' ass back to this lair of humanity that keeps on being threatened by otherworldly creatures one day and the next yet again—God or Lucifer or Crowley or Death or witches or demons or Death Reapers or even the friggin' Leviathans, fuck—Dean _doesn't fucking care_.

They've brought Cas back. They've brought his angel back to him and that... that's enough, man. That's enough.

"Um, Dean," says Cas but Dean doesn't let go, isn't being let of either even if Cas' voice is questioning and—is that a hint of what, is that _self-consciousness_ somewhere in there? 'The hell's he being all cotton-toes abou—

The sound of someone clearing their throat resounds from some place nearby. Really, really, _really_ near like right behind him and—huh.

Dean cringes.

Crap. _Crap._ _ **Sam.**_

Just, great. Dean's never gonna live this down. _Sam's_ never gonna let him— _them_ —live this down.

Go stealthy, just go stealthy, Dean tells himself. Stealthy and sneaky. Dean's a freaking ninja. He's Batman.

He wets his lips quickly, presses them together with his teeth holding the fort from the inside and starts sliding his arms—with as much feigned, smooth Winchester-naturalness as he can act out—from around Castiel's back. He slowly turns Sam's way, but that doesn't stop him from giving Cas' shoulder a more intimate version of a friendly pat-clutch-squeeze.

Dean's doing that thing he does, looking down and then up until he meets Sam's annoyingly knowing puffed-up look, squintin' at him more with an eye than the other, trying for a stern face that transpires _There's nothin' deeper to read here, Sammy, turn those puppy-eyes somewhere else_.

It doesn't go so well, Dean knows, when Sam raises an eyebrow, looking terrifying and unimpressed all the same so it's time to, uh, take the pen in hand and ink-scrap Plan A three times over. _Next._

(And oh man, Dean can just picture Bobby's ghost sneakin' around an' over his shoulder and blowing icy-cold and stale beer-breath all over their current motel room's mirror and leaving behind a souvenir, an ugly scribbling of _Idijt_ obviously finger-smudged with oily, ghostly fingers.

Not funny, imaginary-spirit-Bobby. Not funny.)

Sam's smirking and Dean wonders in an absent-minded state if there's a mojo-curse-witchcraft-thing in those old books coated with dust and ash, property of the late Campbells, that'll make his little brother's face stay like that—a wry, devilish smirk imprinted on his Goddam' face for a long, long crazy-ass time.

Cas apparently's still very creepily fond of peeping around inside Dean's conscience whenever he feels like—now even while Dean's still wide awake, God freakin' damn. That an' Dean's a hundred percent sure the shiver that runs all over his body and lingers at the back of his neck like an itch you swear to God can't scratch is a punishing reminder to not curse, especially with the name of the oh-so-great missing dude upstairs.

Which is—outrageous, really. Dean wants to laugh out loud at it, to cry, to scream, to ask Cas why, _freakin' why_ would Cas still respect and demand respect from others to a missing shell of a no-man who leaves his sons to die and kill—and _end_ everything he supposedly created _with all the love in his heart_ , _pfff_ yeah, right—in the middle of a never-ending war. A utter bloodshed.

Dean wants to. Wants _to want to,_ but he can't. Won't. There's no will at the moment, no need, no whim, no nothin'. There's only Cas and Sam and him and the three of them reunited on Earth and alive and with a soul and with a sane mind and in control of their meat suits and ready to rock and bring Team Free Will back to jammin', full-throttle.

Then Dean really lets himself look and yeah, good ol' Cas pimped with short, shaggy hair, coffee-with-milk colored trench-coat and disheveled suit. Long gone is the peach-fuzz. Dean isn't so sorry to see it gone. That thing belongs in the box.

He'd never thought he'd miss the whole Holy-Tax-Accountant style so much. He'd never thought how well and perfectly it fit this stupid, stupid dumb angel until he'd seen _him_ —a Cas that wasn't Cas no more, in Jimmy Novak's normal attire and stamped with a different name and with a woman clingin' to his arm without memories of himself, of Dean, of them, of all the crap they'd gone through.

It had never really fallen on top of Dean how much it really means to him, how much it changes him and affects him _to have Cas_ there and then in the next second _not having Cas_ there. Cas who's all about not gettin' pop culture references, all for appearin' from nowhere and getting from damned China to nose-to-nose with Dean in three secs flat. It had never really sunk on Dean how much he'd taken Cas for granted. How much he'd taken and abused of his willingness, his affection for him and not reciprocated properly, never shown how really incredibly grateful he was for all the sacrifices Castiel had made for him, how much Cas meant for him too.

It had been then, when Cas had lost his memories, more times than Dean cares to count—or maybe it has been only once and it struck him so freakin' hard, like a comet, it felt like a meteor rain—that it had hurt Dean so much, so much more than salt on an open wound.

It hadn't been til Dean had seen Castiel dirty, filthy, depressing just to take a look at. A tattered man filled with regret and pain and carrying a burden bigger than himself, heavier than he could carry—not in proportion to his human vessel but to his angelic being, to the full power of his grace. Not until he'd seen such a powerful, wise creature become a shadow, a mutilated soldier of what he'd once been.

It hadn't been til Dean had seen Castiel become a reflection of him.

And when he did it twinged at him more than when he'd seen the possible future through Zachariah's "Five Times of Time Swirl of Heaven", where he'd seen an angel fallen and slipping into a human existence, having lost his grace, his wings, having lost his self and morals and beliefs. Dean remembers that time, remembers asking, telling, ordering, pleading Cas never to change the moment he'd came back and been face-to-face with him. The real him.

It's so damn simple, really. Always been, hasn't it? Dean just didn't want to see it, or acknowledge it. And Cas... Cas is giving him this curious look now, his head pending to one side, giving him that look of a child who really, really wants to know what's it all about and is it fun?

Dean chuckles silently, his eyes closing. He must still have a sad look on them, he thinks. Sam's been giving him these looks, especially in the car, as if he's scared Dean's gonna go berserk any moment, as if he thinks Dean's lost so much he doesn't even care anymore. What dream can be worst that what he's already had, right? What else can he lose? And it's not wrong, it's not wrong at all. At least it wasn't 'cause now it's not so much the truth anymore. Now he can stop faking those sinister smiles that could never reach his eyes. Thanks for the tip Frank, but. No more fake smiling, man.

Dean can't blink the sadness away with a _zap_ , with a flick on the forehead. Not the sadness, much less the guilt. The guilt is... the guilt's pretty damn big. And he's still gonna blame himself for having been weak and incapable of pullin' Cas out of the box with him an' Benny. Cas should've been out for as long as him. He'd told Cas, he'd told him he needed him, that he wouldn't leave without him. He'd practically promised and in the end hadn't delivered.

So, truly, what does that make Dean?

A liar. A betrayer. A bastard. A really freakin' shitty fucker excuse of a best friend, a brother.

But it is what it is and Cas is here now. _How_ will matter after, not right now and Dean tells himself to just go with it and with it he goes, with what he feels like doin'.

It's just them here, mere inches apart, Sam a few feet behind and a dozen other people he may or may not know and it doesn't matter anyway. Dean doesn't give a flyin' fuck. His hand lunges ahead of its own accord, has the navy blue tie wrapped a couple times around his fingers in a second, maybe four, and pulls.

Dean just. He just pulls.

And Cas comes right with the tie and if his eyes look like they'll pop out that's just fine 'cause Dean's right there, with him, will never let him go again, even if sweat and blood and grime make their palms slippery and impossible to hold on he still won't let go ever again.

Their lips meet and it's a kiss, it's just a kiss. There's nothin' alarming nor new nor does it lead to lost thoughts of _Crap, what did I jus' do?_ nor does it make Dean wanna say _Sorry, dude, I just. Sorry, man, really_. Dean's had his fair share of lip-locking with women and dudes and angels and even less charming creatures of the night and for a virgin Cas has been all over their dark-side ally—formerly known as Masters, Meg; exorcized-and-back-in-the-race rogue demon—, and learned everything the Pizza-man had to teach.

'Ence. No more remorse, heartache an' for Christ's sake, no more mixed signals.

It does make Dean wanna do more though, press harder, take, go ahead and just take what's always been his for the taking. But it's soft for now, the touch, feather soft, and Dean thinks _What if this is what the physical form of Cas' wings would feel like?_ and wonders if he will ever get the chance to find that out.

There's a light, careful brush of knuckles over his cheek and then Cas' hand settles on his wrist, around it, thumb circling the bone. Cas' mouth just moves slightly to mold against him, as if saying that yes, this is exactly it, Dean isn't wrong. As if to apologize and to say thank you, for everything that passed, for everything that is to come. As if to say Dean's always been all that is important and worthy and good. It makes Dean's insides burn because it's not, he's not. He's not nearly good enough nor worthy at all and the things he's done, _God,_ the things he's done.

But Cas is the same, isn't he? Not that that makes it any better, just makes 'em one hell of a pair. Heh, for two guys who met in the Pit they aren't all that bad, after all's said an' done. They've both done good and they've brought such tragedy upon themselves and others on the claim of the best of intentions and they've died and been re-born to fix their wrong-doings. It seems like no matter what they do there'll always be a road of redemption to walk through. Together.

If the world goes to shit when they're fightin' side by side, trust me, Dean assures, it'll still be a thousand times worse the one time they disagree and go different ways. So yeah. Stickin' together from now on.

Their lips separate soon, there is time later to do it again, to talk about it (which Dean is really not looking forward to much because: talking feelings. Really. Yeah, no, thanks).

Also, pervis voyeur Sammy boy's gotten enough out of the show already. And he's grinning like a fool, too, lookin' at him an' Cas, shameless and still managing to look a bit flushed around the edges. He nods once, chin up and all dimples and L'Oréal swish of strands (and seriously, what the seriously fuckin' fuck is that hair length, all that hair, what is that even, will there be a contest? Huh? Dude, it's... it's just _fugly_ , man.)

Also, Dean's got questions, okay? A lot of 'em. Like, _Cas, how does that work man, one Phoenix Down and you get back all the items you had with you initially or...? I mean, dude, how long've you been back? Went to get a grooming and a clean-up and find a boutique and dress it before lettin' people know that hey, yer not dead?_ and the sort.

But.

But Sam brushes a nail against the tip of his nose. "Don't mind me, guys, just do your thing and, um, yeah. _Your thing_ , about that... Apparently you have something to tell me. Right? I personally think you do. Very much, actually." He crosses his arms, muscles bulging. For all that big... ness he's really not all that intimidatin', someone's gotta tell him that. Nicely. He's kinda sensitive.

"Whenever, you know, of course," Sam continues. "When you feel like it. Or whenever you're ready. Or now, that's good too," he adds. And then he just smiles and all Dean can see is an army of teeth and a freaking kazoo of happiness. _Bitch_.

And it's not even Sam who's seemingly gettin' laid soon. If he's this giddy for his big bro, Dean had no intention in gettin' acquainted with his younger brother's post-coital state of bliss after a year. Doin' a little math without going into shit Dean doesn't know, well, shit about—that includes demon blood orgies and Ruby and _too much information,_ _dude_ —aannnd Dean's still the absolute certain that he. Does not. Need to know.

"Stop your flower-sharing-spreadin' and get your ass in 'ere, Christ, you're givin' me the creeps. C'mere you."

Sam shakes his head, sighs fondly at Dean's upgrade on his permanent social awkwardness and drags his gigantic body right into them, squeezing the three of them into an all-boys hug that kicks the air out of 'em. Overgrown boy with rough voice that he is who cannot for his life not mumble his ever embarrassing lines, Sam says, "Welcome back home, brother."

And this time Dean isn't the target of it, Cas is and heh, does it serve him right.

Cas hugs back after a brief moment of astonishment, a small smile on his lips, his hand brotherly and sure at the middle of Sam's back. "Thank you," he says, and that hint of bashfulness or whatever it is he's almost never without when complimented or forgiven or thanked is there, as if it had never gone way, overthrown by righteousness, too much of it, by greed, or even merely forgotten, shattered, ripped from him, time and time again.

Dean rolls his eyes and says what the hell to no one in particular and concedes—more like starts it himself, shut up, you gotta problem?—to a second group hug even when he and Sam had already had their "welcome back from wherever the hell you've been for the past year, I missed you" hug and slams both Sam's back and Cas' with open palms, smiling as well, despite himself.

Dean's yearly chick-flick moments' limit used and abused in under ten minutes. Awesome. Someone owes him a piece o' pie. Apple. Crusty. Delicious.

Dean coughs and pulls back and coughs again and has to take the weight of Sam's best bitch-face complete with pinched brows of disapproval because of course Sammy would've liked a few more seconds, minutes, _hours_ of PDA and girly craptasticness, of course he would, he's Sam for cryin' out loud. Dean ignores that and tries to ignore the look of celestial-eternal-immortal adoration Cas' blue gaze keeps shooting at him with impressive precision and shotgun power too. It leaves 'im feeling outright uneasy and thrilled in one go. Thing's potent.

Pulling at the lapels of his jacket and gettin' a couple of steps in advantage over the two douche-bags that are his closest friends, his family—same blood or not—, his reason to be and keep going' and all the cheesy stuff, he refuses to look back and just tells them, loudly, "Lets jus' go get you two ladies somethin' to eat, hey?"

He also refuses to look back to check if they're following 'im. Like it or not, the fact is they're already trailin' right behind him, one with large hands in shrimp-pockets and smelling of wet dog and another observing quietly everything that breathes and everything that does not. It's a given.

And after lunch—meat and bread and greasy fries and soda—they're gonna get in the Impala and drive all over the country to where Kevin's run off to and get prophet and stone back.

It'll be winking at Dean, the perfect paint job except for a few scratches here and a lotta scratches there. Long white strokes surrounded by a shadow as black as Leviathan goo. One tire halfway bald and a whole nine yards portable arsenal in the luggage compartment. Smell of weary leather and gasoline and gunpowder. Sweet classic rock filling' their ear-holes with Sam bitchin' about it every few minutes. Three paper bags of salad and pie and burgers to go. Some beer in the cooler. Lotsa space for a cursed-from-the-cradle abomination ex-addict, a hard-boiled broken shell of a righteous man and a one-winged-angel with a mojo that doesn't remember to call in when sick.

Savin' people, hunting things. Family business.

As usual. Like always. Til the end.


End file.
